When historians want to cite evidence of the Civil War being about slavery, they often make use of Alexander H. Stephens’ Cornerstone Speech. As Civil War Emancipation has demonstrated ad nauseum there is plenty of other evidence on this point.

So why the attention to Stephen’s speech, which he gave in Savannah, Georgia, on March 21, 1861? Well, for one thing, by then Alexander H. Stephens was Vice President of the Confederacy. He was never really active day-to-day in the Confederate government, but Stephens was still a high-ranking and influential figure. And since the speech was extemporaneous, Alexander Stephens was probably more candid than he might have been in a prepared address. Certainly, he was much more forthcoming on the connection between sectional conflict and slavery than Jefferson Davis ever would be, a man who already recognized the political need to distance the Confederacy from slavery in rhetoric if not in reality.

From Alexander H. Stephen’s rhetoric in the Cornerstone speech and the fact he clarified his remarks prior to publication with the journalist who took it down, Stephen’s clearly wanted to signal that the Confederate government need not soft pedal on slavery. He stated concerning slavery in this address:

Ultimately, of course, Alexander H. Stephens would be proven wrong. The races really were equal and black Union soldiers would prove it on the battlefield during the war. The Confederacy also ultimately could not withstand northern military force when their system was being undermined on a daily basis by the slaves whose labor kept it functioning. Yet Stephens was correct that the looming conflict was about slavery. Even as he tried to distance himself in later years from his Cornerstone Speech, Stephen’s still had to admit “Slavery was without doubt the occasion of secession.”

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

About Donald R. Shaffer

Donald R. Shaffer is the author of _After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans_ (Kansas, 2004), which won the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship in 2005. More recently he published (with Elizabeth Regosin), _Voices of Emancipation: Understanding Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction through the U.S. Pension Bureau Files_ (2008). Dr. Shaffer teaches online exclusively (i.e., a virtual professor). He lives in Arizona and can be contacted at donald_shaffer@yahoo.com

Hi Mark. Many thanks for bringing this speech to my attention. I can make use of it in about two years. It fascinates me though in JD’s inaugural address as President of the Confederacy that he’s much more reticent about slavery, my guess was deliberately. Davis obviously wanted foreign recognition for the Confederacy, which emphasizing slavery would have made harder to get. So he soft pedals it in 1861. Two years later, with Lincoln embracing emancipation and two years of war behind him, things were very different and I could see why JD decided to emphasize slavery more.